


Vindicated

by Loki_Demon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6359596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Demon/pseuds/Loki_Demon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regulus reflects on the former friend who thought of him as good-hearted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vindicated

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the reddit March Ravenclaw Challenge. 
> 
> Dedicated to my dearest love, the Moony to my Padfoot, /u/parselmouth03, who showed me that I have human feelings.

Despite all my posturing, I am not, it would appear, a cold heartless sociopath. I do, in fact, experience emotions like a human. I’ve worked quite hard to build an emotionless demeanor and I rather take a bit of pride in it. I have not felt acute feelings of compassion and concern in a long time. It makes me stronger, more powerful, and more formidable. And yes, there was always some part of me that was concerned that I had turned into a sociopathic monster and yes, perhaps I sometimes hoped for a moment when I would be able to really care about somebody. But looking down at the broken body of Elisa’s friend, whose ribs were jutting out at odd angles, I have to say that I am not actually a fan.

Elisa will tell you that I am a good person at heart. She probably has done already, she’s very insistent upon it. If you press her on the issue—and many, many people do—she gets that faraway look in her eyes and says she just _knows_. She can just _feel_ that I have a good heart. She is ridiculous, of course. She sees something in me that no one else ever has or will.

Blum certainly doesn’t. Blum is lying near dead at my feet because of me. Blum has no reason to see anything but pure evil in my supposed “good heart”.

oOo

_“Maybe he’s right. Maybe there is something the matter with me._

_I just don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things…could be bad!”_

Someone pointed her out to me in our second year. “That’s the girl who does the muggle paintings.”

I scoffed. It was the expected response. But she was looking at me with her head to the side and an alarming expression on her face. She was _smiling_ but she was smiling like she _knew_ something. Apparently this was a regular habit of hers, looking vague and heartfelt. It was unsettling.

About a month later she tapped me on the shoulder while I was studying in the library. “Hi there, uh, it’s Regulus right? I don’t think we’ve met. My name is Elisa. Elisa Selwyn.”

I stared at her. What kind of person comes up and accosts someone while they are minding their own business in the library? “Yes.”

She giggled. Her smile looked genuine this time, which was no less unsettling. “Yes what?”

“That is my name.”

“Oh! Right. Well. Yes. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to let me draw you?”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “Why would you do that?”

She shrugged. “You have nice features.”

I couldn’t argue with that. My features were spectacular.

oOo

Elisa became friends with Nick sometime in our fifth year. He was a Hufflepuff and a mudblood and not worth my notice, but she seemed rather fond of him. About a week after she had met him she could talk of little else. “Nick told me to try this” or “Nick said yesterday” or “Oh that’s so funny, I need to tell Nick”. She had a habit of becoming addicted to people. She spoke of me a lot, apparently, when we first met. Her parents were pleased that she was making connections with the Black family. She frowned when she told me about that. She is not the sort to want to mix in with my family’s particular brand of insanity. It is nigh inexplicable that she wanted anything to do with me at all, but as I said, she _felt_ something about me—“a deep spiritual connection”, she called it. I rolled my eyes when the first time she mentioned her “deep spiritual connection”, but she had that uncanny genuine look in her eye that’s always given me pause.

If she had some spiritual connection with me, though, she had a whole other level of connection with Nicholas Blum. I liked Nick well enough, for the impoverished mudblood trash that he was—my good heart, I suppose—but Elisa was obsessed. Admittedly, it made me a bit jealous. I did not want to be friends with Elisa. I had not planned for the one genuine bond I formed at Hogwarts to be with Elisa. But Elisa pulls you in, and before you know what is happening you are seeking her out.

oOo

_Elisa scratched her nose as she sat under a tree on the lawn with Nick, then brushed her hair out of her eyes. She had recently cut it short, just above her ears, citing the “excessive femininity” of her long hair as the sole reason. “You know,” she said. “I don’t think I **like** Charms this year.”_

_"I thought Charms was your favorite?”_

_She shook her head, the fringes of her short hair falling into her face again. “I’m **good** at Charms, I never said that I **liked** it.” She threw a fistful of grass into Nick’s face and giggled. “Gosh, Nick, I thought you knew me better than that.”_

_“Well you sure seemed to like Charms well enough last year. When your boyfriend was still taking it.”_

_Elisa looked thoughtful. She cocked her head. “You mean Regulus?”  
_

_Nick pulled up grass and threw it at her. “How many boyfriends have you got then?”_

_“Well. None, as it happens.”_

_“Seems like you’ve got one, as it happens.”_

_Elisa sighed. Nick told her recently that when they first got to know each other he had assumed that she and Regulus were dating because “beautiful people date each other”. Despite ridding him of the notion quickly, he was insistent on suggesting every now and then that they were something beyond friends. “You know, I spend more time with you than I do with him. Are **we** dating?”_

_Nick put on a mock offended expression. “Are we not?”_

_Elisa shoved him, then looked at him quizzically. “What’s the matter?” Nick’s expression had gone vacant and a blush crept on his face. Elisa turned around. “Oh. Hi, Regulus.”_

_Regulus nodded. “Elisa. Blum.”_

_“Mmm, hi,” Nick muttered, tugging at the sleeves of his jacket._

_“Can I have a word, Elisa?”_

_She glanced over at Nick. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’ll be right back, Nick.”_

_Nick watched glumly as she walked away with Regulus. “Yeah alright…”_

_oOo_

_Regulus inhaled sharply and dropped the knife in his hand. “Fuck!”_

_“Are you alright?”_

_“ **Brilliant** , Elisa, thanks.”_

_“Well, there’s no need to get snippy with **me**.”_

_Regulus gritted his teeth and glared as she pulled off her scarf and wrapped it around the wrist he had just sliced open. Nick stared at them in horror. “There’s blood in the potion now,” Regulus muttered. “We’ll have to start over.”_

_“I can fix it. Nick, dear, are you alright? Don’t like blood?”_

_Nick didn’t respond. Didn’t move. He stood there staring at the knife on the table, face pale and breathing shallow. When his body finally unfroze, he pulled his hands into his jacket and wrapped his arms around himself. “Don’t like knives,” he whispered._

_Elisa moved to touch his shoulder. He flinched. Regulus looked at them, intrigued, before reaching to pick up the knife. Elisa slammed it to the table before he could raise his hand up with it. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she hissed. “He’s **upset**!”_

_Regulus smirked. “Wanted to see what he’d do.”_

_“Jesus, Regulus. What is **wrong** with you?” She stared at him with that peculiar knowing expression. “Something’s gone all wrong about you,” she said coolly, turning her attention to Nick._

_“It hurts,” Nick muttered._

_“What hurts, sweetie?”_

_“It hurts.” Nick looked up at Elisa in fear. “It’s my fault!”_

_“Shh, honey, it’s not your fault.”_

_Nick shook his head and reached for the scar on his neck. “It’s my fault! He hurt her and it’s my fault!”_

_“Baby, it’s his fault. That bastard hurt her. He hurt you. It’s his fault.”_

_“No, no, no, you don’t understand. I did it. I did magic. And he **hurt** her, he hurt my mom…”_

_“I know, Nick, I know. I know. But that wasn’t your fault ok? You couldn’t help it. You couldn’t stop your magic and even if you could—he’s a fucking bastard. He’s a sick twisted bastard to hurt his son like that.”_

_“Shoulda stopped him. Shouldn’t’ve left mom. It’s my fault.”_

_As Elisa continued to whisper soothing words to Nick, Regulus reached for the knife again. This time, Elisa was too distracted to stop him. He examined it for a moment, as though he had never seen a knife before. Then he looked Nick directly in the eye as he grabbed the blade and yanked it back out his hand. Nick whimpered._

_Regulus looked bemused. He adjusted Elisa’s scarf so it wrapped around his bleeding hand now as well and said, “Toughen up. Or he’s right. And you’re worthless.”_

_“Regulus!” Elisa cried out. But Regulus had walked out of the room. It was the last time they spoke. Elisa could hardly stand to be near him after that and Nick, who was now her near constant companion, avoided him like the plague he seemed to be._

oOo

I wiped the tears from my eyes and gritted my teeth. Feelings were for the weak and I had spent so long _determined_ not to be weak. Like Blum. Blum was weak. Blum let his father turn him into a coward, a sniveling ball of nothing. _I_ thrived. _I_ became great for my mother’s harsh brand of parenting. I became stronger, colder, and more in command. Blum yielded power to everyone, let everyone walk all over him and make him feel worthless like his father had. I sought out people who made me feel powerful, who gave me a chance to make others feel worthless. Like my mother had.

But I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I hadn’t seen who it was. And for all my supposed strength, I cared too deeply to let him die. I went to see her.

oOo

Elisa was near desperate as she packed everything she would need for the next two days in a bag. She grabbed at random clothes from her closet and threw on a jacket, a panicked look in her eye. Her boyfriend leaned on the doorframe looking concerned. “He said that Nick was at St. Mungo’s…he’s being taken care of, he’ll be alright.”

Elisa spun around and stared at him. “I’m going.”

“I’m not trying to tell you that you can’t go, I just think—”

Elisa threw up a hand. “I know what you think. But Nick is _dying_ and I’m going to see him. End of story.”

“Can we please just talk about this?”

“There’s nothing to talk about! There’s nothing you can say! I’m going to see my friend!”

“He doesn’t want you to,” I said quietly. Elisa and her boyfriend both looked at me as if they had forgotten I was in the room. They likely had. “He said that you should stay put. It’s not safe for you to travel, he’s not wrong.”

“You know what, Regulus, you are the _last person_ —”

“Well seeing as I am the one who knows what has been going on, I rather think that I should be the _first_ person you want to listen to. And Blum was very emphatic that it was not worth the bother to come see him.”

Elisa stared at him with tears in her eyes for a moment, unable to speak. Then she stepped forward and shoved me back, pummeling me with her fists. “You killed him, you killed him, you killed him!”

The boyfriend pried her off of me and I stepped back. “He said his life is not worth it.”

“Because people like _you_ have told him he’s worthless since he was born! The muggles and you and your Death Eater friends, you all act like he’s _nothing_ and your _wrong_ and I _hate_ what you’ve turned into, I hate it Regulus! Right now…right now… _your_ life isn’t worth it!”

oOo

_“What have I become, my sweetest friend?_

_Everyone I know goes away in the end._

_And you could have it all, my empire of dirt._

_I will let you down. I will make you hurt.”_

 

Naturally she went to St. Mungo’s to see him after that. He lived. Healed up rather nicely in fact, I am given to believe. My sources say it was a bit of a turning point for him, realizing how much Elisa cared for him to live. Even in the midst of a war against mudbloods, his ever present self-loathing seemed to diminish a bit. Someone described him as _happy_ to be alive. And he even took off that stupid jacket in the summer sometimes.

I’ve said I was a bit jealous of him? Well. That could have been me, you know. She could have cared about me that way—she used to. _I_ might have been described as happy to be alive. But sooner or later I turn everything good away. With my _good heart_.

If you’re curious about what agony I was reliving when I drank that potion, well it should be clear to you now. I had the chance to be loved, you know. To have someone find my life worthy, someone who would care when I died. I threw it away in my desperate need to be _powerful_. But there’s no power in committing suicide by proxy in an empty cave in the middle of nowhere with no one to mourn you.

There is power in being so dear to someone that they drop whatever they are doing to come see you when you are hurting. 

oOo

_“Vindicated, I am selfish, I am wrong, I am right,_

_I swear I'm right, swear I knew it all along._

_And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well_

_I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself.”_

Elisa sighed, holding the locket in her hand and turning it over. She handed it back to Kreacher and wiped away tears. “I knew it,” she muttered. “I knew he was good at heart, I _knew_ he wasn’t that monster. I just wish—I wish I could have saved him. Wish I could’ve told him before—”

Typical of Elisa, wanting to save everyone. I thought myself beyond saving. Her eternal faith in some non-existent good in me, though, _was_ perhaps my saving grace. It was what gave me the power to do one good deed before I died. It allowed me to be remembered as something of a hero rather than the villain I was known as in life. Elisa offered me my vindication. She saved what was left of me worth saving.


End file.
